Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[LemmyCaution]

Are you telling me that Pesye Schloss' life was completely erased except for this diary entry? There's no other mention anywhere of her?

I don't know the answer to this question. I know that there are other references to the survivors of the shootings that week at Ponar, mentioning women and girls who escaped and made it to the hospital. I know that Kruk mentions Yudis Trojak and Pesye Schloss by name, and I know that Abba Kovner also interviewed Trojak. I know that Kruk is a generally reliable chronicler, and you should too by now if you have finally started paying attention, as his journal meshes so well on so many points with other sources. From reading Kruk's journal very closely, I know that Kruk tried diligently to record events. I know he wrote down rumors, but I also know he investigated important events, consulted multiple sources, and tried to draw reasonable conclusions. The likelihood that he invented Schloss, given the context and given who Kruk was, is about as close to zero as is possible. Kruk's diary is filled with references to individuals, including Trojak and many, many others, who are mentioned by others. Some of these people do not appear in census databases, as Schloss apparently didn't. The chance that Schloss was dead by May 1942 is at minimum 50/50, so her non-appearance in the database, particularly when people not dead and clearly living in Vilna at the time, means absolutely nothing. Again, your problem is with the reliability of Kruk. So if you find Kruk unreliable, let's hear why. It can't be because Schloss doesn't appear in a census list 1) because you have been doubting Kruk, and Schloss, since the beginning of this discussion and 2) Kruk is reliable about so much else. Again, his diary has rumors and errors in it, but the notion that he made up Schloss, or that someone impersonated Schloss, given Kruk's character, given the care he took with major events, given the public nature of the events, and given that Kruk also took testimony from Tema Katz and Yudis Trojak, who are referenced elsewhere, is absurd even for you, echoing the arch-troll little grey rabbit as you've decided to do. You really need to find something substantive, you know, instead of this diddling around.

 

[Wroclaw]

It is entirely and thorough possible, given the scope of the Final Solution in the Soviet Union for the first several months, that people died and that every person who ever knew they had lived died along with them. It was probably even more so in the case in countries like Romania and Hungary, where at least some were still living in basically autarkic shtetl communities.

 

[Clayton Moore]

We have Solomon Garbel

Quote:

3. The Story of Solomon Garbel
On 5 April 1942 four thousand Jews were executed; they were supposed to be taken to Kovno but were taken to Ponary instead. The next day Weiss rode into the ghetto on a bicycle and ordered ten Jewish men to come and bury the ones who had been murdered. So we set out, with Weiss leading us.
We began seeing bodies half a kilometre from Ponary, near the railroad lines; they were the ones killed while trying to escape. There was a sign hanging on the gates leading to the execution site: “Entrance is forbidden even to German officers!”
Rails were laid passing through the gates, so that the trains carrying the victims could pull right up to the pits. The farther we went, the more terrible the scene that unfolded before us. The grass was read with blood. The entire field was littered with bodies. The trees were splattered with brains. Mutilated children lay beside the tree trunks, many of whom were torn in half, with one leg lying here, another there. There was a whole pile of children’s heads. Identification papers, visitor’s cards, photographs and banknotes were scattered everywhere. In one spot lay the body of a German with his throat torn out: apparently a Jew had killed him.
Weiss gave us vodka and said, “Work diligently! See to it that the bodies are undressed and neatly buried. Place the coats to the side, men’s coats in one pile and women’s coats in another. If you happen to find any gold, put it in the bucket. Anyone who dares to take anything for himself will be shot.”
He led us to the closest mound. Then he pointed out various areas that had been covered over and announced: “That is where the Jews captured by the ‘hunters’ are (he used the Yiddish word for ‘hunters’ and smirked). Farther on are the gypsies. Over here are the ones who said, ‘We’ll never surrender!’ – that is, the Poles. Here lie the hunters who turned on us. And here prisoners of war. Over there, however,” he pointed in the distance, “no one lies buried. But not for long. There are still many people left in the world!”
Among the bodies there were some people who were still alive. We did not know what to do with them. Many were wearing a tallis. Others had letters in their pockets that they had written on their way to their execution. I remember one letter that said, “Jews, they are taking us to be shot! Avenge us! Flekser from Sventsyan.”
Curled up among the blood-stained packages that we loaded into the train cars was a little boy who was still alive; he had hidden, and they did not notice him. His name was Bernie Goldshtein from Mikhalishek.
When he realized that we were Jews, he started begging us, “Save me!” We hid him from Weiss and got him back into the ghetto.
We buried about five hundred people. They were scattered all over the field, having tried to run away, they were stilled dressed. The others were lying in a ditch all that remained to be done was to pour lime over them. We were certain that we would never return from that place, that Weiss would have us shot. But suddenly he came up to us, drunk, and said, “You are the only ones ever to visit Ponary and return home.”
At the exit I saw a terrible sight.
The mass grave in which we had buried the Jews strated moving and was heaving higher and higher….
Weiss calmed us down: It’s just the bodies swelling and making the earth rise.”

Damn those SS and their alcohol consumption. What a dumb mistake to make. But surely Mr Garbel would have been well aware of the account of Ms Schloss already, over six months before hand? Surely an account like hers would have raced through the ghetto like wild fire?

Incidentally, do we know how Mrs Kruk - later Paulina Vardia, managed to survive?

The highlighted demands that Mr Garbel was a liar.

 

[TheRedWorm]

Given you admitted ignorance and intellectual laziness, Clayton, why should anyone care what you think makes someone a liar?

 

[LemmyCaution]

The highlighted demands that Mr Garbel was a liar.

Clayton Moore does his usual "it can't be so" with this dramatic claim from Solomon Garbel:

The farther we went, the more terrible the scene that unfolded before us. The grass was read with blood. The entire field was littered with bodies. The trees were splattered with brains. Mutilated children lay beside the tree trunks, many of whom were torn in half, with one leg lying here, another there. There was a whole pile of children’s heads.

About the aftermath of the “Kovno action,” Sakowicz wrote in his journal, based on his first-hand observations: http://books.google.com/books?id=0Z...Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=maneuvering could&f=false

One of the policemen from the ghetto in Vilna dragooned into the clean-up detail gave another account: “When we entered deeper into the woods, a horrifying spectacle was revealed to our eyes. . . . The whole are was strewn with bodies and human limbs. . . . Weiss took us to an enormous put full of corpses and told us to cover them with earth. . . . Weiss led us to a second grave. . . . At the conclusion of the tour, he ordered us to gather the bodies scattered over the area and throw them into a pit.” [quoted in Arad, Ghetto in Flames, p363]

Kruk, too, made note of the “Kovno action.” He wrote that 3 women, from Swieciany, had escaped (Kruk was present when one was treated for a wound in her arm), and that 6 children survivors were brought to the same courtyard as the women (Rudnicka 6). One of the children explained their escape to Kruk. “Now, at 9 in the evening, the 30 policemen have come back to the ghetto. Depressed and exhausted, they say they collected corpses scattered over railroad tracks, fields, etc. Altogether, they think they gathered about 300-400 persons.” p504 And “What Does a Policeman from Ponar Tell?” Kruk summarized the experience related by an unnamed Jewish policeman, one of the 30 sent to clean up the murder site at Ponar. “Weiss declared that the graves had to be covered because, until now, they had been covered with a two-centimeter layer of sand. . . . [D]uring the covering, some of [the police] uncovered [some] and saw a mountain of naked corpses—men, women, and children all together. The bodies were horribly shot.

“Twenty-seven policemen were employed in covering the graves, and three went with Weiss to gather the corpses still scattered over the fields. . . . And about the gathering of the corpses? Most were lying toward the railroad, outside the barbed-wire fence. Those corpses were shot shamefully. In every one of the corpses there are a few bullets, often seven to nine shots. Most were really torn apart, with ripped-off pieces of arms and legs, ripped-up intestines, etc. Apparently they were shot with dumdum bullets. . . . “ pp511-512

Kruk also included a section, apparently based on further interviews, entitled “What Do the Escapees from the Execution Tell?” pp 513-514

 

[Clayton Moore]

Clayton Moore does his usual "it can't be so" with this dramatic claim from Solomon Garbel:

About the aftermath of the “Kovno action,” Sakowicz wrote in his journal, based on his first-hand observations: http://books.google.com/books?id=0Z...Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=maneuvering could&f=false

One of the policemen from the ghetto in Vilna dragooned into the clean-up detail gave another account: “When we entered deeper into the woods, a horrifying spectacle was revealed to our eyes. . . . The whole are was strewn with bodies and human limbs. . . . Weiss took us to an enormous put full of corpses and told us to cover them with earth. . . . Weiss led us to a second grave. . . . At the conclusion of the tour, he ordered us to gather the bodies scattered over the area and throw them into a pit.” [quoted in Arad, Ghetto in Flames, p363]

Kruk, too, made note of the “Kovno action.” He wrote that 3 women, from Swieciany, had escaped (Kruk was present when one was treated for a wound in her arm), and that 6 children survivors were brought to the same courtyard as the women (Rudnicka 6). One of the children explained their escape to Kruk. “Now, at 9 in the evening, the 30 policemen have come back to the ghetto. Depressed and exhausted, they say they collected corpses scattered over railroad tracks, fields, etc. Altogether, they think they gathered about 300-400 persons.” p504 And “What Does a Policeman from Ponar Tell?” Kruk summarized the experience related by an unnamed Jewish policeman, one of the 30 sent to clean up the murder site at Ponar. “Weiss declared that the graves had to be covered because, until now, they had been covered with a two-centimeter layer of sand. . . . [D]uring the covering, some of [the police] uncovered [some] and saw a mountain of naked corpses—men, women, and children all together. The bodies were horribly shot.

“Twenty-seven policemen were employed in covering the graves, and three went with Weiss to gather the corpses still scattered over the fields. . . . And about the gathering of the corpses? Most were lying toward the railroad, outside the barbed-wire fence. Those corpses were shot shamefully. In every one of the corpses there are a few bullets, often seven to nine shots. Most were really torn apart, with ripped-off pieces of arms and legs, ripped-up intestines, etc. Apparently they were shot with dumdum bullets. . . . “ pp511-512

Kruk also included a section, apparently based on further interviews, entitled “What Do the Escapees from the Execution Tell?” pp 513-514

People tell outrageous lies because they know weak-minded people will believe the lies.

 

[Dogzilla]

Thank you Lemmy. You offer a historical scenario, you then state your authorities and this helps those of us simply reading this thread understand what is going on. You are not wasting your time.

Matthew is right. We have much for which to thank you. You were challenged to name a credible witness to the holocaust. You courageously offered us Pesye Schloss. Uke2se agreed that this teenage girl is as credible as the tens of thousands of other eyewitnesses. Even Dr. T defends your choice.

Yet no record of her life exists outside of her testimony in a diary. This helps the readers of this thread understand what really constitutes credible eyewitness accounts of the holocaust. You are, indeed, not wasting your time.

 

[little grey rabbit]

I am most disappointed as little grey rabbit's link appears defective.

Typing in Herman Kruk, I do not find a match, only a Hersch Kruk but Hersch’s address does not match Herman’s. No one by the name Herman Kruk living in Vilna in May 1942, it would seem? The same for Shmerke Kaczerginski (Katscherginsk/Kacerginski), the well-known writer from the Young Vilna movement – no match. Ditto Avrom Sutzkever, the famous Yiddish poet who lived in Vilna throughout this period. No Salek Dessler, assistant chief of police to Jakub Gens. Whatever is wrong with little grey rabbit's link? Or am I not using it correctly? I typed the name in question into the field for names and then pressed the search bar. Is that how it works? Does anyone know? Curiously, the link seemed to work for Anatol Fried and Jakub Gens . . .

The May 1942 census contains 15507 names, which is rather similar to the Stahlecker's report figure of 15000 circa January 1942 for Wilna

Hersch Kruk has a birthyear of 1897, which is the same birth year that his wife gives in her page of testimony. Since I presume Mr Caution's source for Mr Kruk's address is the diary and we know there are problems with this document.
There is no Salek Dessler but there is a David Dessler and people like Goetz Aly and this link
http://www.vilnaghetto.com/gallery2/v/vilna/album69/Vilna_Ghetto_Gate_Guard_Police.jpg.html
seem to think they are the same.
There is a SUCKEVER, Abram born 1913, the same year as the poet.

There is no match for Abba Kovner, but frankly I don't find that surprising.
Shmerke Kaczerginski - there is someone called Ruvim with the correct birthyear -1908. If that is the same person I can't say. Otherwise perhaps he wasn't in the ghetto?

There is no Peyse Schloss - although there is a Pessah Schloss born in 1898 in Warsaw in the Yad Vashem database that Herman Kruk might have known in school. Otherwise perhaps he named Peyse after his Mum (Pesa).

There is no Yudis Trojak, there is no Lili Reszanka, whose behaviour seems to have particularly upset Mr Kruk

With the same stylistic dryness and precision, Kruk documents an orgy in the offices of the Judenrat on New Year's Eve, 1942, and reports on the Jewish girls who have good relationships with the Germans, and even mentions the name of one of them, a former worker in a pharmacy, Ms. Lili Reszanska. And he adds: "This is a local detail I considered it necessary to note." Who is Lili Reszanska? It turns out that at the time he was writing these things down in the journal, she worked in the Jewish police in the ghetto and was one of the few Jews who walked around without the obligatory yellow star.

In short, the May 1942 census (part of a wider Census carried out by the Germans of the entire city) seems to be a reliable document, Mr Kruk's diary less so.

 

[little grey rabbit]

This is mysterious, it appears that despite the detailed testimony of Schloss and Trojak, this was not sufficient to convince the ghetto

Reading the Russian Black Book again regarding the first announcement of ghetto resistance by Isak Wittenberg on the 1st Jan 1942
Page 269

Thus read the text of the first call to action [1 Jan. 1942]. It was like a bolt of lightning flashing in the darkness of the ghetto. It was read at a meeting of people being initiated into the organization, where a deposition by a teacher T. Kats, a woman who only a short while before had been saved from the mass graves at Ponary, was also presented. Wounded by several bullets she crawled out of the pit at night and, half-naked, slipped back into the city.
The bloodied teacher was known to all as a rational and just woman; she was brought here in order to reinforce in everyone a thirst for revenge and a will to fight.
From the very beginning the ghetto group was urged to take up armed resistance.

Why didn't they mention Peyse Schloss and Yudis Trojak instead waiting almost another 5 months before taking action?

There seem to be so many "first survivors" of Ponary, it is wonder the Germans actually managed to shot anyone at all!

Kruk documents the testimony of an 11-year-old girl, Yudis Trojak, who crawled out of a death pit full of corpses and was saved by a Lithuanian farmer who took it upon himself to return to the ghetto, where she provides the first description of the mass executions in the Ponar Forest. Thus, thanks to the documentation and exact dating by Kruk, it turns out that only on Thursday, September 4, 1941 - approximately two and a half months after the start of the executions at Ponar, about 10 kilometers from Vilna - the first word of what was really happening there came to the ghetto.

Kruk, who took the testimony from the wounded girl at the ghetto hospital, is strict with her: "When I asked her how she could see the pit with blindfolded eyes, she laughed cunningly: `I adjusted the cloth like this so I could see ... There in the pit lay a lot of dead bodies, whole mountains of them!'"

Kruk record this shocking testimony verbatim, and does not forget to record the naughty laugh of the wounded girl who said she inherited the bullet from her mother.

 

[LemmyCaution]

The May 1942 census . . . In short, the May 1942 census (part of a wider Census carried out by the Germans of the entire city) seems to be a reliable document, Mr Kruk's diary less so.

And, again, half the Jews alive in Vilna in mid-September 1941 were murdered by December 1941, and you are certain Pesye Schloss--whatever variant of her name is being used--was not among them?

 

[LemmyCaution]

This is mysterious, it appears that despite the detailed testimony of Schloss and Trojak, this was not sufficient to convince the ghetto

No mystery, again. Kovner, for example, interviewed Trojak, as well as Kruk interviewing her, back in September. Are you seriously arguing that Kovner's meeting with Trojak was not among the things that helped him, and others who heard it, form opinions that led to the 1 January 1942 declaration that "Ponar means death"?

Reading the Russian Black Book again regarding the first announcement of ghetto resistance by Isak Wittenberg on the 1st Jan 1942
Page 269


Why didn't they mention Peyse Schloss and Yudis Trojak

You mean why did they reference and apparently present to the group Tema Katz, a teacher, rather than a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old? The document states their reasoning - because of the reputation of Katz, who was, as noted upthread, interviewed also by Kruk and quoted by him at length. Despite her non-appearance in the May 1942 census, Trojak seems to have left more of a trail than Schloss, and Katz, a teacher with a good reputation, more so. According to Kruk's diary, and the note you've quoted, Katz was not among the victims of the fall killings (I checked yesterday and could not find Katz/Kac in the database - perhaps you will under a variant spelling I didn't think of).

There seem to be so many "first survivors" of Ponary, it is wonder the Germans actually managed to shot anyone at all!

No, these people were presented only as first survivors, whatever you mean by that, by you, not in the sources, at least those we've seen. The number of survivors of the first wave of shootings in early September seems to have been a dozen or so - I haven't toted up all the sources but that's my recollection. Out of, according to Jaeger, "864 Jews, 2,109 Jewesses, 817 Jewish children (punitive action because German soldiers had been shot by Jews)" on this occasion - with over 3,300 murdered, again according to Jaeger over the next week or so.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Matthew is right. We have much for which to thank you. You were challenged to name a credible witness to the holocaust. You courageously offered us Pesye Schloss. Uke2se agreed that this teenage girl is as credible as the tens of thousands of other eyewitnesses. Even Dr. T defends your choice.

Yet no record of her life exists outside of her testimony in a diary. This helps the readers of this thread understand what really constitutes credible eyewitness accounts of the holocaust. You are, indeed, not wasting your time.

Here is a real insight into your methodology. Without paying attention, or even a thought in your head, from the first mention of the mass shootings at Ponar in September 1941, you doubt every bit of the various testimonies about the action. Finally, in a transparent gambit, LGR doubts the existence of Pesye Schloss, based on a census carried out months after several waves of extermination actions against Vilna's Jews, and now you latch onto that. With certainty. To do this, you ignore three obvious problems with your stance.

First, to do away with Pesye Schloss, you have to doubt Kruk, who, despite LGR's quips and asides, is a reliable chronicler. You have to doubt Kruk to the point of essentially calling him a liar to dismiss Schloss. You haven't even read his journal (and I doubt that LGR has, as his references to it seem Google inspired), yet you have formed a judgment a priori. You offer not even a flicker of a reason for, or proof of, Kruk's having invented any of his interlocutors or references. You are taking LGR's word for Kruk - and LGR fabricated the provenance of the diary, got caught, and has chosen not to reflect on his lies. You've read all that, and still stick to the same opinion you had at the outset of the discussion.

Second, you continue to keep on a blindfold regarding other testimonies and sources meshing with Pesye Schloss's. There is Yudis Trojak, referenced by others but also not appearing in the May 1942 census, according to LGR. There is Tema Katz, referenced by others, who may or may not be in the May 1942 census - Kruk saw her working in a laundry in March 1942. There is the Jaeger report. There is Sakowciz's diary. And there is the list of other sources I noted upthread. All of these form part of the same body of evidence, of which Schloss's recorded testimony is also part. Yet you ignore all of it, repeatedly, in order to maintain your stubborn ignorance and bias.

Third, you now go along with a poster who has already distorted the history of Kruk's journal in arguing that the lack of a record of Schloss's existence in May 1942 census - when the chance of her being alive was probably less than 50% - somehow casts doubt on her very existence - and indicates that Kruk made up this interview - but apparently not the interview he did with Trojak at the same time and with Katz a month later. This is astonishingly dumb reasoning on your part.

What you ignore is the simple fact that the chance of any Jew who was alive and living in Vilna the first week of September being in the May 1942 census was only 50%. Schloss's not being in the census is perfectly understandable.

To reinforce this point about why you shouldn't go all in on Schloss's being in the May 1942 census, consider this: Roughly 40,000 Jews, out of a pre-war population of 70,000 or so, remained alive and in Vilna after the Great Provocation massacre. Between the time of the Great Provocation massacre and January 1942, another 20,000 or so were murdered in a series of German extermination actions, all of them documented. Jaeger himself gave the Jewish population of Vilna as of the end of November 1941 as 15,000 (another 5,000 or so lived "illegally"). How can you, or LGR, have any opinion at all, based on what we know, on whether Schloss was among the 20,000 or so taken to Ponar and shot during the fall of 1941, after the Great Provocation? In fact, her non-appearance in the census carried out the next spring would be taken, by any rational individual, as an indication that she was among the victims - since we have a reliable chronicler mentioning her in September 1941 but she is not in the census. Frankly, we don't know. She was a 16-year-old whose family was wiped out at Ponar in September 1941, and whose "imprint" in the world was clearly not the same as an adult teacher, Tema Katz.

But all this, apart from exposing the hypocrisy of your reasoning, raises another question for your position. A German source, the Jaeger report, mentions 15,000 Jews living in Vilna in late fall 1941. I think the report is an underestimate, by 5,000. So let's say the right number is between 15,000 and 20,000. According to Arad IIRC, citing earlier census data and information on refugees, about 60,000 Jews lived in Vilna when the Germans occupied the city. So what happened to the 40,000 or so Jews who were "missing" from Vilna by December 1941? Some, but not many, fled the Germans. It was difficult for people to flee east, as the Soviets closed the borders and allowed only those with party cards to cross. Most who tried to flee had to turn back - Arad says that maybe 3,000 Jews got through, and a couple thousand more dispersed into the Belorussian countryside. That still leaves you with a problem of around 35,000 Jews whose fate you need to account for.

You haven't grappled with their fate yet, no one bit, preferring to throw darts wildly at the sources - or should I say one source. But your problem is very serious, because we have more than one source for what happened to these 30,000+ Jews. Some of those sources have been discussed in this thread, others merely referenced. As the killing actions went on throughout the fall, you can bet (and on this you could safely go all in) that there are many, many more sources documenting the actions.

So, on the one hand, we have multiple, reinforcing sources to a series of extermination actions reducing Vilna's Jewish population during this period (in reality, these sources start with July and extend through the period). On the other hand, we have you and your chums quibbling with one source - which meshes with the others - ignoring the interlocking evidence - making up false scenarios about the sources - holding firm opinions despite logic and evidence.

And you wonder why I brought up Pesye Schloss?

LGR has always thrown the forgery card to escape this trouble - or pulled tricks like mixing up Kovno and Vilna or dating undated documents or promising to make a case against the OSRs but getting busy with Libya or fictionalizing the provenance of Kruk's diary.

What will you do to explain the overwhelming evidence explaining the reduction of Vilna's Jewish population in summer and fall 1941?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Thank you Lemmy. You offer a historical scenario, you then state your authorities and this helps those of us simply reading this thread to understand what is going on.

Matthew is right. We have much for which to thank you. You were challenged to name a credible witness to the holocaust..

The operative word was "authorities",which is plural. You have been offered a minimum of 200 eyewitness as to conventional holocaust history. Eyewitness evidence is accumulative and when consolidated with documentary, physical and other evidence leads to understanding. You lot are simply holocaust deniers and here for my entertainment while experienced historians give me free history lectures that I use elsewhere.

 

[twinstead]

What will you do to explain the overwhelming evidence explaining the reduction of Vilna's Jewish population in summer and fall 1941?

Deny it. It's what they do.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Correction to this from my post #7472:

She was a 16-year-old whose family was wiped out at Ponar in September 1941.

This is incorrect, as I was writing about Schloss as well as about Vilna's Jewish population changes later in the post only from memory. In fact, Schloss's brother was killed at Ponar on 26 July 1941, and her father "sometime later," not the first week of September, and her family was not entirely wiped out: in September she had a surviving brother and did not know the fate of her sister. It was her mother who was killed at Ponar when Pesye and she were taken there the first week of September.

Consider what LGR and Dogzilla are trying to maintain.

They would have us believe that, rather than Kruk's having written notes about 3 interviews he had with people, he wrote a note about an interview with a person named Yudis Trojak. someone whom Abba Kovner also interviewed, and a couple weeks later wrote out a summary of an interview with a person named Tema Katz, who was known in Vilna as a respected teacher and who appeared, according to rabbit's helpful note, to re-testify about Ponar at a meeting on 1 January 1942 - but then for no reason whatsoever Kruk invented Pesye Schloss and added her to those he wrote about the first week of September and whose existence these doubters doubt because her name isn't in a census taken months after she was likely murdered by the Germans.

This is improbability from the Land of the Improbable.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Since I presume Mr Caution's source for Mr Kruk's address is the diary and we know there are problems with this document.

We do, do we? Pray tell how and what.

You've said now, a few times, that Kruk's diary is suspect, even down to his street address, for some obscure reason. And that the diary fell into Soviet hands and that is how it became unreliable. What we know is that there are problems with this account of yours, not with the diary.

As to the diary, and its problems, please elaborate.

And, speaking of Dogzilla and double standards, please don't neglect to name the Soviets who took the diary (I mean the individuals and how you know their names) and worked it over - as I have named the German who directed the cleanup at Ponar after the "Kovno action" and as you know I can name the Germans who directed the actions in the Great Provocation. And as you know I can point to the sources for the likelihood of the involvement of these named individuals.

So let's see the evidence - at the same level of specificity that we have given for some of the Ponar killings - that you have for the problems you've charged Kruk's diary with.

 

[Wroclaw]

And, speaking of Dogzilla and double standards, please don't neglect to name the Soviets who took the diary (I mean the individuals and how you know their names) and worked it over - as I have named the German who directed the cleanup at Ponar after the "Kovno action" and as you know I can name the Germans who directed the actions in the Great Provocation.

Indeed. I too would like to hear this.

 

[Dogzilla]

And, again, half the Jews alive in Vilna in mid-September 1941 were murdered by December 1941, and you are certain Pesye Schloss--whatever variant of her name is being used--was not among them?

Sounds like we're getting down to the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence line of reasoning.

 

[TSR]

Sounds like we're getting down to the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence line of reasoning.

l
On your part, perhaps. However, no one else here cares to watch you mangle the concept again.


Free hint: We *have* evidence, that's what you're so desperate to hand wave away.
l

 

[Nick Terry]

Happy? If I were dead I don't think I'd care much. But if someone really did destroy all the evidence I existed except for a diary entry I would not expect people in the future to assume I existed just because somebody wrote in a diary that they talked to me.

Are you telling me that Pesye Schloss' life was completely erased except for this diary entry? There's no other mention anywhere of her?

For the greater part of human history we have absolutely no idea of the names or identities of the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived. There are frakking KINGS whose names survive in a single source.